We're Moving to Texas Y'all!

It's been a long time since I've blogged and as you can see from my blog title, a lot has happened in the last two months! In the middle of May one day I received a text from Daniel, "How do you feel about moving to Texas?" my response, "Call me..." :-)The funny thing was that on some level I think I sensed that change was coming. In fact, that week my weekly devotion had encouraged me to pray that God unsettle my life to help me be where and doing what I am supposed to be doing. And literally, days before this question, I asked Daniel what the odds were of his company moving us since when he started it was mentioned that moving up could mean relocation. Now, here we were with relocation looking us in the face.
Daniel recieved a call from the plant manager of their Corsicana, Texas plant and he asked if Daniel would be interested in relocating to take the position of the Inside Sales Manager. I have always told Daniel that I would be willing to relocate for his job if it made sense and if the kids were still young but truthfully Texas wasn't on my top 5 list of places I wanted to live. (We all know I'm a CA beach girl at heart and Texas is even further than Fresno!) I definitely didn't let that hinder my excitement for a possible new adventure so I told him that I definitely thought we should check it out and see if it was something that we wanted to do together as a family.
The next few weeks were filled with a lot of discussion and a lot of prayer...what if's and what not. And it was hard to think that very shortly we could be moving to Texas. Who do we tell? Do we keep it under wraps for now? What will our friends and family say? How will Gianna take it? Should I make plans to do anyhting in August? Agh! So much to think about it but definitely lots of excitement was discussed too about the possibilities. We did tell a few friends and our family, all of which were sad but extremely supportive.
At the end of June, Daniel and I flew out to Dallas which is an hour north of their Corsicana plant and drove down for Daniel to meet up with the Plant Manager and other managers within the company. Before flying out we had done some research and realized very quickly that we wouldn't really want to  live in Corsicana and Dallas was too far of a commute so next on our agenda was to check out some of the towns south of Dallas north of Corsicana. Let me just say first that while I was open minded about the idea of moving to Texas I definitely didn't expect to like it as much as I did and do. Daniel had never been to Texas at all and I had only been to Austin so we went in not really knowing anything. I must say we were both pleasantly surprised.
First and foremost, Daniel really liked the people who he would be working with, secondly the people EVERYWHERE we went were SO stinkin' nice, the schools are awesome, the houses we looked at that we could afford with our real estate agent were mansions compared to what we afford in California and the list went on and on. The icing on the cake is that my good friend Liz whom I have been friends with since junior high and her husband live in Dallas so we already know friends there! The downside, our friends, family, church, our entire support system is in California...definitely hard to be away from all of that.
But, we had a blast exploring the Dallas area for a few days and decided that we really like the town of Waxahachie (pronounced WUH-xahacie) which is about 30 minutes south of Dallas and has a population of 30,000 which is super small town compared to the 500,000+ in Fresno but it really had everything we would want for our family. And did I mention how nice everyone is!? lol!
By the time we boarded our flight back to California, it was really pretty much decided besides a few details and that has been the best part about it. There wasn't really much of a discussion after Texas, we both knew and felt it was the right move for us in our hearts.
Once we got back, there was a lot of details that needed to be worked out between Daniel and his company so we still didn't want to tell everyone about it but now it's official! Daniel starts October 1st (which thankfully is a lot further away than we had originally thought) and the Pearce family is packing up, dogs and all and headed out to Texas! I still haven't wrapped my head around it completely mostly because I don't think I can really know what we are getting into until we are there and living it. In the meantime, moving our entire lives from California to Texas is occupying a lot of my time and thoughts. There are times when I get sad thinking about leaving all of the amazing friends and family here...literally we have the BEST friends and family! And mostly, I get sad for Gigi because I'm not sure how much she will really understand and I know she will miss her grandparents, cousins, friends, church, gymnastics, etc. terribly. But the adventurer in me is excited about the opportunity for change and meeting new people and exploring new places. And most importantly, I have faith that God is putting our family right where we need to be. It might not be forever...it might be...but Fresno is a quick 3 hour straight flight away. :-)
And I gotta say it is pretty funny seeing how Daniel was born and raised a Dallas Cowboy fan...I guess it was meant to be! haha!
So, the next few months will no doubt be busy with packing and what not but I definitely want to take this time to spend as much time with everyone here that we love. It is most definitely going to be a bittersweet change for the Pearce family and I know that we will continue to recieve all the love and support that we are so blessed to have from everyone here even when we are in Texas. I will also make a point to be MUCH better about blogging and plan to blog our entire experience so stay tuned. Watch out Texas! The Pearce family is on its way! :-)